AN ARMY major accused of cheating to win the top prize on the television quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was yesterday described as a "hard-working, law abiding citizen who worked for everything he has got".

Royal Engineers Officer Charles Ingram was a "com-mitted soldier" who had lived an "honest and decent, hardworking life" said his barrister, Sonia Woodley QC at his trial.

Ms Woodley said that the "theories" put forward by the prosecution during the high-profile case were "tenuous and unsafe".

"At most it amounts to suspicion," she told the jury at London's Southwark Crown Court during her closing speech.

Ms Woodley asked the jury to consider "the nature of the man" and the life Ingram had led.

She said he was a good father to his three young daughters and a devoted husband who had chosen a life in the Army.

"You may think if you choose a life in the Army you never expect to get rich," she said.

Ingram, 39, is in the dock with his nursery nurse wife Diana, also 39, originally from Sully, Vale of Glamorgan, now of High Street, Easterton, Wiltshire, and college lecturer Tecwen Whit-tock, 53, of Heol-y-Gors, Whitchurch, Cardiff.

Each deny a single charge of "procuring the execution of a valuable security by deception" on September 10, 2001.

The Crown claims Whittock, who is head of business studies at Pontypridd College, used a total of 19 strategic coughs to let Ingram know which of the four options in the ITV1 quiz was the correct answer to a question.

Ms Woodley dismissed prosecution claims that the defendant had been experimenting with the use of pagers to pass the correct answer to Ingram as he sat in the show's hot seat.

The Crown claimed that the trio had dropped the plan, opting to use a series of coded coughs instead.

Ms Woodley said, "We say the suggestion of the use of the pagers is untenable and implausible.

"It is a shot in the dark to bolster the Crown's theory that Mr Ingram was cheating," she said.

Ms Woodley also dealt with accounts of the experience of being in the TV studio and whether Ingram would have noticed Whittock's coughing, which he has explained was caused by a dust allergy.

She said he was shown to be concentrating on the screen listing the possible answers to the questions and on the show's presenter Chris Tarrant.

Ms Woodley also reminded the jury that during his evidence Mr Tarrant had said he was not aware of any coughing and she said in his experience of presenting the show he should have known if there was cheating going on.

Ms Woodley said that Ingram's behaviour after winning #1m and the emotions he showed were "entirely normal" in the circumstances.

"Mr Tarrant described them as normal as people who had just won #1m would be in that situation," she said.

In his closing speech, Adrian Redgrave QC, representing Mrs Ingram, said the trial had been a source of "great joy" for some and "pure misery" for others.

"In the latter falls Mrs Ingram. In the former, it is the press, ITV, Celador - brilliant for publicity."

David Aubrey QC, representing Whittock, said it was "an amazing coincidence" in a case centred around allegations of coughing that so many members of the jury had experienced the same affliction during their time in court.

"Perhaps you can under-stand the position that Tecwen Whittock was in when he was in the studio and surrounded by over 100 people, with cameras around him ... when suddenly the dreaded cough began," Mr Aubrey said in his closing speech.

Mr Aubrey said the prosecution wanted the jury to put a "sinister spin" on the videos of the quiz show they had seen during the trial to reach the conclusion that Whittock had plotted with the Ingrams to cheat.

He added that his client was not a risk-taker, and agreeing to take part in a scam in front of hundreds of people, cameras and microphones was "an appalling risk" to take.

Mr Aubrey then addressed the videotapes that the court had been shown, saying, "What you have seen and heard is a complete misrepresentation of what will actually have been heard in the studio that night."

Mr Aubrey said that the tapes had isolated certain microphones and did not give an accurate version of what would actually have been heard while the show was being recorded with an audience in place.